He looked scandalized at that, so I laughed, “I’m in a good mood, honey. This feels really right to me, both online courses and starting our family. Being your knocked-up trouble? Delicious. So, let’s talk about that later, since Bruce is waiting.”

  He growled, “Not much talking is needed,” his eyes telling me there’d be a lot of ravishing, but very little talking, which sent a naughty thrill down my spine. Gods, there was a thrill in me but also that rightness I’d mentioned. I felt… serene in it, all of it, I was where I was meant to be, his lover, his cherished mate, and his dirty little whore who needed her tin roof rusted, badly. To be defiled, used, owned, and put with child. I was breathy just thinking about it, and heat flooded my body radiating straight from my needy sex.

  Damn, down girl, later. This extra charged sexual tension between us deserved to simmer and tease us a whole lot more, I was thinking.

  I winked saucily and put an extra swish in my hips as he followed me out of the office and toward the backdoor to the deck.

  Bruce said, “Good, we have a location. Apparently, she went back to Japan,” he looked at me, “Like you she’s on her last semester of college, which is why we didn’t find her right away. She’s actually inside her dorm room right now. Us three are it, I wouldn’t trust anyone else on the council to piss on me if I was on fire.”

  Gary chuckled, “I get that. Things could get messy in a dorm full of college kids.”

  Bruce nodded in agreement, then looked at me, “I want you to suppress her power to teleport, and get any protection spells you want to use before we go. That will free up Gary and I to quickly overwhelm her defenses and smother her power, so she doesn’t wind up destroying the building. At two to one, we should overwhelm her quickly, and when she’s tapped out, I’ll cuff her. We also need to be on the lookout for the traitor, if Kaya knows anything about them, they’ll want her dead.”

  I nodded, and then cast a protection spell around Gary and I.

  Gary said, “We’re ready.”

  Bruce replied, “It’s a dorm room, so it’s going to be a little bit tight.”

  I said, “Wait, are we sure she didn’t set a trap for us assuming we’d find her, or thinking Gary would find her? I’d hate to teleport into a suppression ward, for instance. If I was her, I’d have warded the dorm room heavily, if I thought I was being targeted and hunted.”

  Bruce frowned, “If there is a ward, the three of us shouldn’t have a problem snapping it before the magic can gain hold and suppress our power.”

  Gary said, “Assuming her hidden ally didn’t put their power into it too.”

  Bruce sighed, “Still three to two, we can’t risk tipping her off and her fleeing if she feels us come in from even a short distance away. We’ll have to accept the risk.”

  I nodded, not thrilled but he was right, “Ready.”

  Bruce said, “On three. One, two,” and a golden globe enveloped us all on three.

  When it cleared, we were in a dorm room with two beds and a stack of ten of unpacked moving boxes. There was a ward, but our power flexed and broke it by reflex, it’d only been cast by Kaya.

  Kaya herself was sitting on her bed in a pair of black skintight yoga pants and a loosely conforming thin pink sweater dress that was long enough to preserve her modesty. She looked completely shocked by our arrival, as I willed my power to suppress her ability to teleport.

  Kaya gasped, “Oh god,” in a terrified voice as darkness billowed around her in a shield as both Bruce and Gary struck. So terrified she was about to die, that I actually felt guilty even if that wasn’t at all the plan. She was no older than I was, just a month younger, but she hadn’t grown up around thirteen goddesses with a god for a dad, and she was just trying to survive in a crazy new world after a very ugly person had poisoned the well. She was truly petrified of Gary.

  Kaya put all her power into defense and trying to escape, yet Gary and Bruce were both her equal in power, and I was holding her here, so the fight didn’t go on very long. Gary’s darkness tore at hers, while Bruce’s blasted through it.

  Then Bruce lunged forward, and he punched her in the face hard enough to ring her bell badly as the back of her head bounced off the wall and put a hole in the drywall. While her mind was spinning in a fog of pain and disorientation, her power failed without focus to direct it, and Bruce slammed on some cuffs.

  Kaya’s stunning fragile beauty was marred by her bloody nose that looked broken, but I took care of it with a quick healing spell. The poor girl started to whimper and shrink down in on herself, her body shaking violently as she waited to die. She looked beyond terrified, and into panic and shock, while Bruce loomed over her and glared.

  Fucking men.

  I snapped, “Both of you back the hell up,” as I got on the bed and pulled her into a hug. I did something then that I’ve only done once before, for my mother, and I called up my mantel of love and started to infuse her body with it, while both Gary and Bruce took several steps back while looking at me in surprise.

  She responded almost immediately, clinging to me and rocking, which was better than shaking by a mile as I calmed her with the purity of love.

  If I ever found out who did this to her, they’d rue the day their mother opened her legs. She wasn’t like me at all. Not raised by gods, nor did she grow up in a house full of people that lived and breathed sex. She was naïve, sheltered her whole life by her father’s power and money, confused about her sexuality and new dark desires, even afraid of it, and a victim of our enemy. Sure, she was twenty-one like me, but she had a lot more growing up to do before she’d be as confidently independent as I was.

  One day she’d be amazing I was sure, she was also smart, powerful, beautiful, and she wanted to leave the world a better place than she found it. Just like us.

  I just couldn’t bear to see her like that anymore. We’d thought she was still hunting and planning to kill Gary, but apparently since the failed attack she’d been living in fear and hiding, sticking her head in the sand, not knowing what to do. It was plain as day to me in the way she just fell apart.

  I also scrapped my hopeful plans. Maybe one day we’d seduce her into the family, but she had too much growing and discovering to do. What had she been doing the last three and a half years anyway? She needed to get her kinky self on, and to discover who she was and own that in herself, accept and rejoice in it. Until then, taking her into the family would be robbing far too many experiences from her.

  But that didn’t mean we couldn’t make her a close friend of the family, and look out for her, make her an ally. Eventually if it did happen, it would happen organically when she was ready. It felt right, it was what she needed, and there was no regret to be found in me in it. I just hoped she would be our ally and friend, once we’d untangled the mess for her.

  I was also making a few assumptions in there that might not be true. I mean, she had the same kink to want to be dominated and taken selfishly with authority by a man. But did that mean she had my other kinks, or my old desires to experiment far and wide. Some women never experimented that way, and some few even got married after sleeping with just one or two others.

  So, I shifted my thinking again. No seductions, no expectations, just make friends with her and organically see where it went. That part was the same, but she might not have to play the field to find herself first, and unlike me she may in fact not want to do that at all. Which would be fine and good, it wasn’t about me, it was about her.

  “You’re safe, Kaya. Come on, pretty girl, you’re okay.”

  She sniffed, “What is that.”

  I smiled, “Love. So we’re not the bad guys. Surprise!?”

  She snorted, “You’re deluded.”

  I shook my head, “No, I know exactly what I am, but why don’t you cast the detect compulsion spell for yourself.”

  She frowned and backed off, “The what?”

  Bruce snorted violently, and I glared back at him.

  I smiled, “It seems the one that set you on this false path kept one of the most common witch spells off the grimoire she gave you. So that you wouldn’t easily discover she’d lied to you with a single spell.”

  She shook her head, “Most common?”

  I nodded, “Sure. Witches and vampires don’t get along well, and witches and shifters are even worse. But yeah, vampires have compulsion, so the witches in a coven check each other out daily that way, to make sure none of them have been compromised. It’s one of the most common spells, found in almost every grimoire, so not having it in the one given you is a significant lack.”

  I brought up the grimoire on my phone, and after paging through to that spell I handed it to her.

  Bruce said, “Interesting interrogation technique.”

  Gary coughed.

  I rolled my eyes, boys. “Ignore them.”

  She cast the spell word for word, then frowned, “Nothing happened, but how do I know this is real?”

  Bruce snorted, opened the door and grabbed a poor unsuspecting male student into the room, then barked, “Stand still for sixty seconds, then leave and forget you were ever in this room and that you met us.”

  The poor kid just stood there frozen, and Bruce turned to look at Kaya significantly.

  She cast the spell for a second time, and she looked even more disturbed as she obviously felt the evidence of compulsion on the young man.

  She shook her head, “But the things I saw.”

  I smirked, “Fully consensual, and what we need from Gary to be satisfied.”

  She looked doubtful, both disturbed and wistfully ashamed.

  I shrugged, “Bruce is the god in charge of our government’s law enforcement, and he doesn’t need to know the details, we’ll talk later.”

  She blushed, “She didn’t lie.”

  I nodded, “Then she’s deluded, what did she say, and can we see her likeness?”

  She replied, “She called herself Naomi. She said he killed my last incarnation, that he betrayed Nate to seek rule, and that he had all of you under his control. That he was playing a long game, and would be sure to take me out before I could seek vengeance. I didn’t want to get involved, I just wanted to be me. I’ve never even killed a bug,” she shivered, “But she convinced me it was self-defense and I didn’t have a choice, especially when I thought, when I saw… you know.”

  Bruce said, “There are no goddesses named Naomi.”

  She said, “She felt like a witch covered in spells,” she cast an illusion spell, but none of us recognized the person.

  Bruce said, “Tatiana can shapeshift.”

  Yeah, so could I, but I’d never done it. I liked my body and looks just the way it was.

  Gary said, “It’s not proof enough to press a case, the others on the council would vote against us forcing a mind reading, and it could’ve been any woman under an illusion.”

  Bruce grunted.

  I asked, “What if Kaya said she recognized her power signature?”

  Kaya still looked unsure, but that was better than her being certain Gary was the bad guy.

  Bruce said, “That might work. The three of us plus Steven would be a majority, and all we’d need to plumb her mind for the truth.”

  I nodded, “Gary didn’t betray Nate, Nate had him under compulsion. All we were trying to do was to put a watchdog function on his rule, to stop his abuses of power. Perhaps she perceives that as a betrayal, or honestly believes that there was more to it than that. One thing is for sure, she didn’t accuse him of killing Nate, because she arranged for Nate’s death, and the god of war and the goddess of discord paid the price for that in their lives too.”

  She frowned at me, “You’re telling the truth. I can tell.”

  Bruce raised an eyebrow, “That would be… incredibly useful.”

  Kaya shook her head, “I don’t want to be involved, still don’t.”

  I sighed, “You can’t help what you were born as. You’re taking poli-sci?” I nodded to the books on her stand.

  Kaya nodded, “I want to go into government.”

  I smiled, “Well why not ours. We’re all sorts of full of potential corruption.”

  Bruce and Gary snorted.

  I shrugged, “We’ll need someone to take over the watchdog function if Tatiana goes down, an honest and idealistic goddess without ambition would be a good choice there,” I turned back to Kaya, “It also isn’t full time, so you could still finish college and go into politics here, if your country will accept you that is, now that you’re a goddess.”

  Kaya sighed, “I don’t want to be involved, but I at least owe you identifying the woman that turned me against Gary. Gods, you really, umm,” she trailed off with a blush.

  “Why don’t you give us your contact information, and Bruce will let you know when and where to come to testify.”

  She did that while I took off the cuffs and tossed them back to Bruce. I was confident she wouldn’t be attacking Gary again.

  Then I waved at them, “Go away. Girl talk time.”

  The men looked at each other ruefully, then disappeared in darkness and golden light.

  “Watch your back, she won’t want you to testify, but if you’re ready for her she can’t take you alone. So yes, we’re a select group of goddesses. You know my father is the seer?”

  She shook her head.

  I nodded, “Well he is, the rebirth of Apollo, sun god, arts and leisure, and the seer. I’ve always wanted a large family like I was in while growing up. So when we decided to go after Nate I decided to try and build a council and a family. And he used his power and found those three other goddesses, that are as freaky as I am and also strong proponents of justice. We all need a man to take totally control of us in bed, I wouldn’t say it’s normal. It’s really not, we’re the outliers in our dark needs and appetites. There are only four of us, after all, but it isn’t exactly a rare thing either. A lot of women like their man to be a little possessive and to surrender themselves in the bedroom, but in our cases it’s a lot more acute than that. I’m sure you saw we all had other kinks as well.”

  She blushed, and then changed the subject, “Why did you go after Nate?”

  I replied, “He took one of my father’s goddesses away a long time ago. A political prisoner to ensure his good behavior, you could say, and she languished in Tartarus for twenty-two years. The official accusation was she was mouthy to him. Imagine being locked up in hell and powerless for twenty-two years, because you have a smart mouth.

  “So I went after Gary first, which is when I discovered he was under compulsion. I figured out how to free him, and after being enslaved for twenty-two years he was eager to take down Nate a peg or two himself. We didn’t plan on killing him, but so far that’s worked out pretty well. We have a government council now, with all the duties and powers split up.

  “We think Tatiana is doing this for the same reason she killed Nate. Because she wants to rule and her ambition rules her, not the other way around.”

  Kaya bit her lip, “I feel so stupid. I believe you. I felt like she was misleading me with the truth somehow, but I eventually decided that it was my own feelings of not wanting to be involved with other gods that was prompting that. Especially after what I saw while spying. You really enjoy it all?”

  I grinned, “When he spanks me, I cum like a rocket launching to orbit.”

  She blushed, “Okay, I believe you. You’re very…”

  “Wicked? Delightful? Depraved? I’m only telling you for two reasons, so you know Gary is innocent in this, we belong to him, but he’s also wrapped around our little fingers.”

  She tilted her head, “The second reason?”

  I smiled, “So you’d know it was okay, how you want the same thing. That it’s not the norm, but it’s a well-established and accepted behavior that’s pretty natural and based in instinct if not popular culture.”

  She blushed furiously, “What… how?”

  I shrugged, “A few different ways. Gary explained how him becoming a god, having the darkness inside of him, brought out his dark lusts and turned his protective instincts to overbearing protectiveness, which we all love too, by the way. Also, your face kind of gave it away when we talked about it, and third, I’m the goddess of love, pleasure, fertility, and beauty. It’s kind of my thing.

  “That said, I have no idea what if any other kinks you have besides being taken roughly by a man in selfish need.”

  She blushed.

  I smiled, “We all have similar and different other kinks, no judgement. I won’t share anyone else’s, but I love being disciplined, humiliated, having all my body parts used, and I love cleaning up the messes he leaves in the others, if you know what I mean,” she blushed hard, “I also love being treated like a lady in public, and being fawned over. I call it the princess and whore program, there’s a princess and a whore in me, and Gary takes care of them both.

  “If you ever need an ear, feel free to drop by anytime. It really can help to talk about it, and to share your freakiness with others so you know you’re not alone, and that you’re not some kind of degenerate. I get the idea this is all new for you, and you’re ashamed of those desires. Which can be fun too.”

  She sighed, “I tried to kill the man you love, why are you being so nice to me?”

  “Because I think we’re a lot alike in our beliefs, morals, and principles, and we could be allies, maybe friends. Many gods are not worthy of the trust I’m extending and hoping to earn from you. So it seemed prudent to get to know you a little before you become jaded with everyone that’s a god. You’ll only be the fifth I’ll trust enough to get that close to, so it’s not a small thing I’m offering. Allies and friends you can count on, and I believe the reverse would be true as well.

  “Anyway, I blame Tatiana for what you did, and for making you a victim too, I don’t blame you at all. Empathy as well, I’m sorry your first experience with us was so… vile. Granted, I was murderously angry yesterday, but Gary helped put it in perspective. He was never mad at you at all, in fact he admired you for trying to save us from him, even if it wasn’t needed. That shows your heart, you weren’t just concerned about your own life and self-defense, you wanted to save us too.”